Manipur News

When it comes to gender equality, Manipur is a land of contradiction. In many ways Manipuri women are much more liberated. Traditionally they have been economically independent and as in any agrarian society, they participated in the same occupations as their men folks. This is except in matters of soldiering, and there are in fact explanations that traditionally women in the state are vitally involved economic activities and in keeping the family hearth burning precisely because at times of wars, able bodied men automatically were conscripted into the state’s fighting forces. Since wars and raids were frequent, it became essential for the women to fill in and do the needful to keep the economy of the place standing. That the tradition of women shouldering the major part of the responsibility of taking care of family needs has hung on even after the advent of the modern economy is a failure of the tradition from growing with the demands of the time thus making itself anachronistic and redundant. What is also true is, while a traditional woman in Manipur would be much more independent and liberated than a traditional woman in most other parts of sub-continental India, the same is hardly true of the modern woman. Manipur, and indeed the entire northeast would fall far behind in this. Just considering the example of women leaders who emerge on the political horizon would be evidence. Again, the power of women in Manipur in the traditional sense is witnessed in the Meira Paibi movement, the most recent climactic demonstration of this power was on July 15, 2004 at the Kangla Gate in the now famous naked protest by 15 women. In many ways Irom Sharmila is another demonstration of this same phenomenon.

It is in the transition of this traditional strength to the modern incarnation of the Manipuri woman that the curtain has fallen. For evidence, look at the Manipur State Legislative Assembly. In the current one, there is only one woman MLA, and this too almost by default. Had the lady not been the wife of the chief minister, Okram Ibobi, it is unlikely she would have made it. In this sense, it can almost be said the lone seat occupied by a lady was won by the chief minister and thus it is his second seat in the Assembly. In other words, there is a woman in the Assembly only in form but in spirit it is a man’s seat, making it not altogether incorrect to say that in actuality there is no independent woman representative in the current Assembly. Compare this with traditionally conservative states like Rajasthan, Bengal, Tamil Nadu etc. These states have seen towering women leaders who even rose to the position of chief ministers. Is such a situation thinkable in Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh or for that matter Meghalaya, where women are supposed to have always occupied an especially powerful place in a matrilineal social structure? Something is just not right and this calls for right advocacy and intervention.

The trouble perhaps is also about a hangover from a patriarchal feudal past and the inability of the modern to overcome it. The values of this patriarchal order are ingrained deep in the society and its proponents incidentally are not always men. Women are equally responsible for its perpetration. This latter point is in two ways. One, in the manner Jean Paul Sartre explains in his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” where he says through generations of oppression the oppressed begins to believe in his or her own degradation. She then identifies her own detested self image in others in similar predicament as her. Thus, it is often the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law who are the meanest and cruellest to the daughter-in-law. The other way this social inequality is perpetrated is by an internalised self interest of the feminine gender. This internalisation has become almost an intuition. Evidence of this is seen practically every day whenever a woman thinks it fit to project herself as the weaker sex, and as if by rights guaranteed by this status, insists on jumping long queues outside bank counters and ATM machines. True the patriarchal order is also zealously guarded by men who like to see their women as cultural show pieces, dressed and groomed the way they want, and behaving as helpless dependents they can lord over as chivalrous defenders. All these hypocrisy on the part of the feminine gender and the hegemonic stupidity of the strutting males in Manipur must first change before a radical transformation capable of bringing about a parity of power in the relationship between the two genders can come about.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/elusive-gender-equality/

Leader Writer: Hrishikesh Angomcha
Considering the limited number of postgraduate seats offered by Manipur University in its own campus, the state government should initiate the task of opening up postgraduate courses in the colleges. As of now, DM College of Science is the only government college to have opened up PG courses. Thousands of students graduate every year from various colleges, but then only few hundreds of them could pursue postgraduate studies in the state. The limited number of seats in Manipur University is a big challenge to the students. No doubt, the level of competition is high as thousands of students vie for admission to few hundreds seats for postgraduate courses.

The state education department should chalk out ways and means to offer higher education to maximum number of students. The only way to offer postgraduate studies to more number of students is to open up various PG courses in the colleges of the state. However, it is not an easy task for the state government to do all at once. The government should at least consider opening up PG courses in colleges like DM College of Arts, DM College of Commerce, GP Women’s College and Imphal College where enrolment of students is relatively high. With such arrangement many students will be able to pursue postgraduate courses in the colleges other than in Manipur University.

Even the regional campuses of IGNOU and IGNTU could not accommodate many students. The number of seats for PG courses in various colleges and universities of the state should be increased to accommodate the growing number of students graduated every year. Moreover, not many students could afford to study in other universities outside the state. So, the government should consider opening up PG courses in the colleges as soon as possible.

According to the preliminary census report of 2011, the literacy rate of the state stands at a staggering 74 percent which is even higher than the country’s overall literacy rate. However, this high percentage of literacy rate could not contribute much to the human resource development of the state. The education department should enhance human resource of the state by focusing more on quality rather than quantity of education. Like the elementary education the government should try to ensure higher education to each and everyone so that every person would be able to contribute significantly to enhance human resource of the state.

Besides PG courses various job-oriented courses must also be introduced in the colleges. The students would benefit a lot if such courses are opened up in the colleges. The outflow of students from the state would eventually come down if the education department works in the real interest of the students. The state government needs to put more emphasis on higher education sector as there has been laxity on the development of colleges for the last many years. The students must be encouraged to pursue higher studies by providing better facilities and conducive academic atmosphere.

Therefore, the state government should try to develop the infrastructures of the colleges as early as possible to impart quality education to the students. PG courses must be opened up in the colleges soon to boost human resource development of the state. The authorities of Manipur University should also consider increasing number of seats to various PG courses. Thrust to higher education sector will expedite the progress and development of the state. After all the students are the future pillars of the society.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/open-up-pg-courses-in-colleges/